Sunday, January 13, 2013

One freezing winter night in Beijing around 2001, a friend dragged me to the entrance of a well-known and at the time upscale shopping center to show me this sign. We both laughed so hard that I disregarded the advice and nearly slipped on the ice.

There are websites full of "Chinglish" like this, and a part of me feels that I shouldn't laugh at it...but I do. And I take photos...

Sometimes the signs are poetic....

Sometimes they are impenetrable...

Giving very thorough advice is also popular:

Others just involve a different approach to branding:

Supposedly there was a big campaign before the Beijing Olympics to try and rid the city of badly translated signs, but though "the slippery are crafty" apparently is no more, many remain, and outside of the first tier cities, mistranslations abound:

(I forgive you! Really!)

But some of my favorite signs involve, not mistranslations, but the use of English as "cool" and almost subversive expression...and in some cases, not even "almost."

My favorite area in Beijing is around the Bell Tower and Drum Tower -- one of the last remaining hutong neighborhoods in the city. One street, Gulou Dong Dajie, has shop after shop selling musical instruments -- everything from electric guitars to traditional Chinese drums to ukuleles...and there's plenty of rock n' roll attitude to go with:

And although English does not have the reputation for romance that French does, wandering down an alleyway one night in Beijing, I came across this:

Thank you for starting off my Sunday with a big smile, Lisa. I shall take it as a sign, in a manner of speaking.

I particularly liked your link to the Chinese symbols tattoo site. I see those tattoos on all sorts of body parts on Mykonos and always wonder if the wearer actually knows what they mean. Sort of the same way I wonder whether the Chinese tourists wearing English language tee-shirts understand what they're offering to do...though they can change their message a lot more easily than the tattooed.

In the early '80s, when the Rubik's Cube first was introduced, one of them that I bought came with a small sheet of instructions on how to solve the cube, obviously translated into 'English' by a non-English-speaking person from China. It was absolutely hilarious, at times ALMOST understandable before suddenly veering off into complete Jabberwocky-land. I still have it around here somewhere, although it may never again surface in this mess I call an 'office.' Sigh.

I have so many of these photos, too! It was hard to choose. From the sign on a Dali cruise boat for a "Stool Room" (oh, yes. It is) to a billboard explaining the cultural significance of "Strange Stones," there are some real jaw-droppers.

But getting tattoos of a language you don't understand and haven't confirmed the meaning of? Yowzer. That's a whole other level of stoopid.

These signs are awesome! My favorite from my personal experience was the menu in a small rural town where they advertised "Fried Children." Actually, the funniest menu item I ever saw was Gangha - but that wasn't exactly a mistranslation, now was it? Mostly these signs scare me about what I must sound like when I try to speak Chinese! Although maybe the Chinese, too, find it funny and I should just enjoy being an entertainment provider.

Very funny, ol. No wonder I can never understand directions from things made in China! I really like the look of Chinese characters for a tattoo, but then realized it's a bit ridiculous to get one when I'm not Chinese.